Uneasy Rhetoric

The fact that the arena deal is going down should surprise no one. It was a poorly executed measure designed to coddle the Maloofs by giving them an extraordinary amount of public good for an extremely small private investment.

Yet, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have expected it to be as unpopular as it is turning out to be:

In the survey of 600 Sacramento County residents taken between Sept. 22 and Sept. 25, 58 percent said they would vote against Measure R, which would raise the sales tax.

Just 23 percent said they would vote for it, and 19 percent were undecided.

Measure Q, the advisory companion measure that would earmark the sales tax funds to be split between an arena and other community amenities, received a higher level of support, with 42 percent of respondents saying they would vote yes, and 38 percent saying they opposed it.

However, Measure Q’s passage would be meaningless without the sales tax money contained in Measure R.

Only 16 percent of those polled said they would vote for both Q and R. [emphasis mine]

The “pro” campaign is issuing the usual spin about how the campaign hasn’t gotten underway yet and voters are still confused about the details. I disagree. It may not fail as badly as the poll indicates, but both measures will fail; R because it is a tax increase and Q because it was never designed to succeed in the first place.

What’s this you say, Uneasy Rhetoric?

That’s right. The Maloofs went and whined like spoiled children about the fact that there was not enough parking in the Railyards plan and if things couldn’t be worked out in the Railyards they might have to build in Natomas anyway (as others have pointed out, such an “out” had been in the deal the whole time).

They had been given a gift horse, and they looked it straight in the mouth.

Their comments obliterated what was probably the best — and in my mind the only — reason to vote for the arena deal: building the arena in the Railyards would spur development of one of the largest opportunities for urban infill in the state, if not the entire country. As LivingInUrbanSac said in a comment on a post by Carl:

I refuse to vote for a suburban arena in the Railyards. No point in essentially taking the existing Arco and putting it 5 miles closer to Downtown. That is a TERRIBLE idea. The Railyards plan is too good to F it up like that.

The proponents of the measure even released an advertisement focusing on the Railyards without mentioning the Kings or the Maloofs.

Why would the Maloofs jeopardize their cash cow? Either it is a) because they know nothing about politics, b) they don’t really care that much about the Sacramento market, or c) a little of both.

Without the Maloofs’ wholehearted support, this campaign is a failure. Without the Maloofs’ wholehearted support, I have to ask why we went through this exercise in the first place.

I suspect that the days of the Sacramento Kings have been numbered for a long time. The “deal” struck between the Maloofs and local government was just a way for our officials to continue dreaming big, while the Kings’ owners were already looking elsewhere.

Sacramento was convinced the relationship could still work, even as the divorce papers were being drawn up.

In the end, I’m voting against both measures. When the deal was finalized, I had already made up my mind to vote against Q, but I would not have objected to a small sales tax increase to allow local governments in the county to do many good things.

Unfortunately, this whole debate has left me bitter. If the locals want to come back with just a measure for a sales tax to bolster general funds, I’ll happily be in the small minority who votes for it. For now, it’s No and again No.

(aside: If you agree that the new Bee site is crap, raise your hand. This was a front page article in this morning’s paper, but to find it, I had to use Google News).